With many brands and organisations starting to plan in earnest for 2018, it’s a good time to take stock of your social strategy.

The pace of change is fast and social networks have evolved considerably, introducing new features even since the summer. Are you fully up to date and confident you’re taking advantage of the latest innovations?

I’m having lots of conversations at the moment with businesses about this topic so I thought I’d share 8 top tips, in a series of posts, to transform your brand’s social engagement.

1) Listen up

We have ears! YouTube says brands enjoy a 43% lift in awareness and consideration when viewers are watching videos with the sound up. Give people a reason to turn up the volume. Mentioning your brand by name in the soundtrack will also have more impact than in the post wording or description alone.

In the next post: Are you realising your search potential? And how can social help you drive higher message retention?

Our new research featured in The Drum shows how online influencer content now accounts for almost a fifth of consumer media consumption.

Our Good Relations survey of over 1000 people found more than half (57%) have made a purchase based solely on influencer recommendations. This rises to 69% for Millennials.

Only friends and family recommendations are more important on purchase decisions.

Our research demonstrates that having a strategic influencer marketing programme has become a necessity for all brands, whoever they are targeting. It’s a channel that demands the attention and budget to reflect the way consumers use and rely on influencers when making purchasing decisions. Despite the report’s findings, we are still seeing a great disparity in the way CMOs are approaching budget allocation; on-balance favouring traditional platforms, even when the evidence points to a need to amplify influencer spend.

The changes to Twitter announced yesterday really help make the platform easier and more accessible for more people and more brands.

The flipside is it’s easier for brands to spam users, upload more “push” content or shamelessly retweet themselves. It’s called social media, not antisocial media, and the PR nightmare begins when brands broadcast the wrong type of content in the wrong way.